Zephaniah described the great day of the Lord. There would be great distress and anguish as the punishment continued and the towns were destroyed.
Zephaniah called to the people to gather together and seek the Lord before His anger consumed them. The area of Philistia was warned that they would be homeless. The Ammonites, Moabites and Cushites would be punished also. Assyria including Nineveh would be left desolate.
Jerusalem was full of people who didn't obey the Lord and were corrupt. The Lord had decided to gather the nations together and pour out His fierce anger on them. God would destroy the evil people and leave the meek and humble, those who trust Him, as survivors in the land. They would know that they had been comforted by God.
Haggai
When Darius king of Persia was in power, Haggai was given a message from God. The Lord asked why the people lived in fine houses, while His was a pile of rubble? Until they took care of the Lord, He would give them just a little of what was possible. Fortunately, the leaders who had returned from exile in Babylon paid attention to what the Lord said and followed instructions. The Lord made them eager to work on His temple.
The Lord promised His Spirit would be right there with them as they worked on the temple. He promised them that since all silver and gold belonged to Him, the new temple would be more glorious that the first. One day the Lord gave Haggai questions to ask the priests. First, suppose consecrated meat in a fold of fabric touched other food, does that food become consecrated? Their answer was no. Then suppose someone had touched a dead body defiling themselves, if that person touched the consecrated food would it become unclean? Their answer was yes. God explained that that was how it was with every offering they made to Him, but it would get better. Because they had completed the foundation of the temple, the Lord would bless them richly. Later, the Lord told Haggai to tell the governor Zerubbabel that He was going to wipe out kings and kingdoms, but that Zerubbabel would rule in the name of God.
Zechariah
The penultimate of the twelve minor prophets of the Old Testament, Zechariah was a contemporary of Haggai. During the reign of king Darius of Persia, the Lord spoke to Zechariah. The message for the people was simple, come back to me and I'll come back to you. So they turned back to God and admitted He had done to them exactly what He had said He would do. (Sometimes I wish I could see these visions too, because pictures speak volumes.) Zechariah's first vision began during the night. In a valley among myrtle trees, he saw riders on red, brown and white horses, with a rider on a red horse in front of them. An angel was there to explain things to him so he could understand what he was seeing. So Zechariah asked who the riders were. A man standing in the myrtle trees told him that they were sent by God to find out what was happening all over the earth. Then the riders told the one in the myrtle trees that they had been everywhere and found out that the whole world was at peace.
Tomorrow read Zechariah 1:12-7:14
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